


I Hope It Stays Dark Forever

by cloakoflevitation



Series: I Hope It's Already Too Late [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Dark Sides-Centric (Sanders Sides), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Feelings, Gen, No Beta – I Hope the Worst isn't Over, Song: No Children (The Mountain Goats)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27515383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloakoflevitation/pseuds/cloakoflevitation
Summary: This is part of a series.If the first part was badass dark sides, then this part is the dark sides freaking out and doubting everything they just did. We got some good angst here (in my opinion at least). Some lovely dark sides family moments.***Warnings: Swearing
Series: I Hope It's Already Too Late [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010970
Comments: 23
Kudos: 44





	I Hope It Stays Dark Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sonicthehedgewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonicthehedgewolf/gifts).



> @Sonicthehedgewolf, tysm for reading and commenting on the first part of this series, and I hope you were serious about following me into exploring this universe adksjfskf

“Holy fuck.”

Virgil, sitting in a kitchen chair with his feet kicked up on the table, barked out the parody of a laugh and muttered, “You can say that again.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Janus ignored him in favor of running his fingers through his hair, knocking his hat into the floor, not that he noticed. “What just _happened?”_ Flashes of angry voices and vengeful words clouded his mind – he wasn’t sure if he was proud or ashamed anymore.

Remus stopped chewing on his bottom lip long enough to pointedly remind him, “It was _your_ idea.”

“I know,” he bit back, scowling. “Don’t remind me.” Janus hung his head, eyes squeezed shut for a long moment. He murmured curses just under his breath, trying to quell the rising panic in his chest. It was okay, everything was okay. He started pacing. “What the _fuck_ was I _thinking?”_ He briefly shot a look at Remus, who had stooped over to pick up Janus’s hat and was now twirling it around on his finger, and then at Virgil, who only raised an eyebrow. Janus made a sweeping motion with his arm. “What were _you two_ thinking?! Why did no one stop me?!”

“To be fair,” Virgil answered, “The others did try to stop you.”

“To be fair,” Remus parroted Virgil, “I just don’t think. At all.”

Janus gave him a withering glare, not in the mood for any of Remus’s jokes, but his frustration gentled when he saw the nervousness hidden in the tremble of Remus’s hands and at the corners of his mouth, turned down ever so slightly. Janus started pacing again.

Remus made a few noises, like he thought about saying something but stopped himself before he really got any words out. Janus had no idea what he wanted to say or why he was stopping himself – and to be perfectly frank, he didn’t have the capacity to care at the moment. He was barely hanging on to his composure by a thread, nearly drowning in his own doubts, so he didn’t have the patience to tease out Remus’s.

There was a scraping noise, and Janus turned his head to see Virgil had kicked out a chair and was looking directly at him.

“Dude. Sit down. You’re gonna make me have a panic attack.”

Janus considered sitting for all of half a second before rejecting the idea outright, knowing he would spontaneously combust if he didn’t keep moving, keep pacing. Only half-way expecting an answer, Janus muttered, “How are you _not_ having one already?”

Virgil shrugged a shoulder. “We can’t all have our meltdowns at the same time, right? Gotta take turns. And it seems like you’re taking your turn first.” There was something scared behind his eyes, and the longer Janus looked at him, the more he could see the tension in his posture, the way he nervously tapped his feet (which were still on the table), the way he started chewing on his bottom lip, same as Remus.

Janus started to laugh and before he knew what had happened, it had somehow turned into a sob, and then he was pressing his hands over his mouth, as if no more noises escaped then somehow that would magically fix everything.

“…Janus?”

He flinched – he couldn’t help it. Remus’s voice sounded so _small_ and uncharacteristically like himself, and it made Janus’s heart rate spike. Gloved hands clenched into fists at his sides. Desperately, he asked, “Can we do this?” He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see the truth written on the others’ faces. “What are we _doing?_ Why are we doing this?” His voice caught, and he whispered, _“What have I done?”_

Hands touched his shoulders, turning him, and then a hand under his chin lifted his head until he was left looking up at Remus. Remus ran a hand through Janus’s hair and then set his hat back on his head. “You did what you had to do,” Remus said firmly, his ridiculously high level of self-confidence back in his voice. _“We_ did what we had to do.”

“I–”

“The others were wrong,” Remus steamrolled over Janus’s protest. “You know they were wrong. Something had to be done, and you were the one with the guts to do it.” Remus’s hands ran across Janus’s shoulders and down the sides of his arms, smoothing his cape, before straightening the clasp.

Virgil kicked out another chair at the table, and Remus took that as his cue to take a seat.

Feeling entirely off center, Janus shakily asked Virgil, “What, no words of encouragement from the peanut gallery?” only to immediately regret it when Virgil’s signature smirk didn’t appear. It was meant as a joke, something to lighten the atmosphere.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Virgil’s gaze flickered around the room for a moment, and Janus could practically taste the nostalgia and the memories in the air. “I said I’d never come back to the dark side, but I did.”

The unspoken _for you, because of you,_ rang in Janus’s ears as loudly as if Virgil had yelled it.

Janus couldn’t bare to look at him anymore, feeling emotion close off his eyes and his throat. So he turned to Remus, hoping for something, _anything,_ to alleviate the sentimental weight that had settled over the room. But he found Remus staring at Virgil the way that he used to, as if Virgil had hung the sun, moon, and stars in the sky, the look that promised Remus would give Virgil the world if he only asked. And Virgil, perhaps sensing the phantom feeling of Remus’s gaze, turned to him, and then his expression softened into something poisonously sweet and perilously tender, for the briefest of moments.

Something ached inside him, and Janus thought maybe this was what healing felt like.

Pressing the ends of his sleeves to his eyes, Janus let himself collapse into a chair. Mercifully, no one said anything about the way he was leaking emotions all over the place.

Virgil cleared his throat, and Janus thought he could hear Virgil choking on his own emotions. “So. Do we have a plan or… ?”

Janus swept Virgil’s feet off the table with one solid push, giving him a pointed look that wasn’t nearly as scathing as he meant for it to be. “Why are your feet on the table? We eat here. Were you raised with no manners?”

Virgil let out a huff of laughter, a faint tremble in it barely betraying whatever he was feeling. “Uh, well, considering I grew up with you… _yeah,_ I was raised with no manners.”

An affronted noise left Janus’s mouth (because they were the _same_ _age_ and why was it _his_ responsibility to raise the others anyway?) and he looked to Remus for support, only to receive an amused grin.

“No no, he’s got a point.” Remus tapped a finger to the side of his nose, eyes sparkling with the knowledge that he was getting under Janus’s skin.

 _“Betrayal,”_ Janus hissed, and Remus had the audacity to _laugh_ right to his face.

Virgil smiled at Remus, sharp and sarcastic and with enough mischief to promise something bad, the way he used to look at Remus before everything, and Janus felt horrible disgusting emotions crawl around in the empty cavity behind his ribs.

He summoned a notebook and a fountain pen and announced, “Well, the plan won’t write itself,” and it had nothing to do with changing the subject or being afraid of being vulnerable.

They sat around the table for a long time, and by the end of everything, Virgil had colored all his nails black with a sharpie, Remus had covered both his hands and forearms in glitter pen sketches and doodles, Janus had unknowingly smudged ink on his fingers (and then all over the right side of his face, much to the private amusement of the other two), and collectively, they had come up with page after page of their ideas to run things better in the Mindscape.

Janus could only hope they didn’t crash and burn.

**Author's Note:**

> Before you ask if I'm going to keep writing this series (because I don't know lmao), tell me what you'd like to see and I might write it. It can be as specific or broad as you'd like.
> 
> I kinda want to do a third part about our trio of light sides, but I can't decide if I want to make them feeling bad and sorry about everything or if I want to make them gearing up to go to war.
> 
> But yeah if you want to see more of this universe please interact because I don't know what I'm doing here. Normally I have plan for fics, but this one is just shots in the dark.


End file.
